Canon Rules — Epistemology, Adversarial Protocols & Anti-Patterns

Quick Reference — The Five Operating Principles

1. Mechanism over association — state the causal chain or it's not proven
2. First-principles over tropes — derive from physics/biology, not genre convention
3. Evidence hierarchy — canon source > derived lore > cross-ref inference > "feels right"
4. Anti-reductionism — trace implications through every connected system
5. Adversarial self-validation — "what existing canon contradicts this?"

Detailed References (load on demand)

• references/epistemological-framework.md — Full framework with named sources: Ioannidis corollaries, Garden of Forking Paths (Gelman), Aesthetic Fallacy (Hossenfelder), Humpty Dumpty Problem (Taleb), predictive power as ultimate metric (Broken Science Initiative), OODA Loop (Boyd)

• references/adversarial-protocols.md — Adversarial Red Teaming, Adversarial Collaboration (Kahneman protocol), Russell Conjugation stripping, Self-Correction Loop, Ensemble Thinking (Diversity Prediction Theorem)

• references/metascience-canon-filters.md — 6 diagnostic filters adapted from Ioannidis for worldbuilding: sample size, effect size, confirmation bias, flexible analysis, replication, survivorship bias

Anti-Patterns (Quick List)

• Vague Lore — generic without checkable detail
• Missing Locked Canon — settled decisions not recorded
• No Verification Step — declaring clear without full-repo grep
• Too Much in One Pass — mixing physics + prose audits
• Patching Forward — 3+ contradictory fixes → revert, rethink
• Flexible Analysis — reinterpreting a rule to accommodate new lore
• Trusting Without Location — no file + line = reject the finding
• The New Orthodoxy Trap — the system itself becoming rigid dogma (see Weinstein critique)

Out of Scope

This skill is a reference catalog. It does NOT execute audits (use /auditing-physics or /auditing-canon), stress-test decisions (use /interrogating-design), or check wiki structure (use /lint-wiki).